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40 For 40 Progress Report 10/12

I finished five more goals in the last month. I now have two months left to do the final nine. All of them have progress made–most of them are mostly done–and I feel good about completing all 40 before November 2.

27. REVISED: Eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day for 40 days. This may well be the hardest one so far, and I gave myself far more leeway than usual. On an average day, I was really only getting about three servings, but I was doing my best and decided it was good enough. I felt like I was okay to check this one off because I resolved to keep working on it daily, and here I am a month later, still getting as many fruits and veggies as I can each day. Good habits are what I’m shooting for with most of these, anyway. It makes a big difference.

28. No sugary treats for 40 days. Following the lesson I’ve learned that abstinence goals work better in conjunction with replacement goals, I did this one at the same time as the one above about plant food. Much easier than I thought it would be! …perhaps because I let myself have soda as a cheat, and I greatly increased my salt intake. Still. This is surely the only time in my adult life I’ve gone a month without chocolate. Now, I can moderate my diet with much more awareness than I had before.

29. Eat at 40 new places. This is was such a great goal! I discovered so many fantastic new taco places, and have actually bonded with several new students this year by talking about it. I started by wanting to branch out into new foods, but I discovered that there was a whole deeper level of Mexican food that I had never tried. This project was delicious. What a great idea. I’ve posted updates a few times, but I’ll share the rest of the notes soon.

30. Watch 40 great films with my children. I started this one with an eye towards what I had done with my older children–Citizen Kane and such–but mostly I ended up showing them better stuff in areas they liked, just a little more mature than what they were already watching. It was a great start to sharing my passion for film. I originally understood this goal as meaning “grown up classics, not silly kid stuff,” but several of the films we watched were children’s classics, and it was time well spent. I think each kid found some quality new stuff for us to chew on. So, mission accomplished.

31. Listen to 40 works by Haydn. I decided to listen to the top 40 entries on a ranking of his symphonies, and to listen to each one twice. I’ll post the list with notes tomorrow. It was a great, deep experience with music. Honestly, I feel a bit wiped out after it. That was a lot of masterpieces to cram in one right after another. But, hey, #yolo, right?